


Us

by conniptionns



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Implied/Referenced Drug Use, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-09
Updated: 2017-07-09
Packaged: 2018-11-29 17:34:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,216
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11445693
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/conniptionns/pseuds/conniptionns
Summary: commission prompt: Kevin and Aaron falling in love





	Us

**Author's Note:**

> Here goes nothing! Hope you like it!

It had been a fair bit of time since Aaron had talked to any of the Foxes. Not that he was avoiding them, per se, but he was currently in his third year of med school. That was when med students diversified their study for the particular fields they would be going into, and Aaron didn’t feel like he had spare time to breathe, must less keep up with his social life. Aaron was actually self-diagnosing because he was certain that blood no longer flowed in his veins; no, he was pretty sure that he gave himself a paper cut the other day and bled coffee. He hadn’t slept in a week and it was only going to get worse from there, so no, Aaron hadn’t spoken to any of the Foxes.

It was strange that he missed them. That was something that he wasn’t expecting. During his five years of undergrad, Aaron couldn’t get a moment away from any of them, save for dates with Katelyn—that had ended amicably, they had an open relationship to begin with. Aaron couldn’t really remember a time where he had craved his annoying clique. _The Monsters_. That name and the stigma that came along with it was something that Aaron almost missed. He was studying to be a trauma surgeon, but at the moment, he had an internship with a pediatric doctor and all of the kids adored him. Nothing screamed _monster_ like having tiny children climbing all over you, begging for stickers.

He almost _missed_ the annoying group of men that he had hung around with in undergrad. Half of them were family, but even still, he couldn’t remember the last time he had skyped with Nicky and only god knows the last time that Andrew had taken his call. His therapist told him that time was going to be a huge factor in the healing of _that_ particular relationship, but Aaron was finding himself lonely _now_. Neil was probably with Andrew, but Neil had never really taken a shining to Aaron. A painful side effect of being a twin, people always had to choose _one_ of you. Kevin was, well he was _Kevin_ , a veritable exy god, and well, Aaron had lost everyone’s numbers when his phone was stolen at the airport in Germany years ago.

Aaron supposed that he could always ask Nicky, he was always plugged into the mainframe, as it were, but that was a level of effort that Aaron himself wasn’t ready to exert. No, Aaron would just have to put up with his class full of overworked and under caffeinated medical students.

Dating was a complete nonissue. Nonissue being that Aaron didn’t have time for a life, much less time to go on dates. That was the lucky thing about being a med student, everyone else was suffering from the same social unavailability—except those few freak students that got perfect marks, were always well rested, and of course, always had the perfect partner. Sexual frustration was just another ailment to be diagnosed and treated. A romp in a car between classes was a common occurrence. It was typically with the same group of people that got tested regularly and swore up and down that they wouldn’t sleep outside of the group, and would always use condoms and a secondary form of birth control. The last thing a med student needed was a serious STI—inconvenient _and_ an embarrassment, given their field of work.

Something that Aaron had been working on for years with his therapist, and on his own, was his ingrained homophobia. Aaron, himself, now identified as bisexual. His therapist suggested that his homophobia had been him repressing his sexuality. It sent Aaron into an introspective mood, one which ended with him concluding that _no,_ his homophobia was not a product of repression. His homophobia had been a product of his upbringing, spurred on by his own closemindedness and his anger problems from years of abuse and neglect.

No, Aaron Minyard didn’t believe that he would ever deserve a pass for the things he had said to strangers, even worse his family. There are some things that you can never completely apologize for, but it was something that Aaron was working very hard to do.

His apology to Andrew was met with an abruptly ended call that left him feeling bereft.

His apology to Nicky was met with initial shock, but almost immediate forgiveness, which made him feel worse about himself. He wished Nicky had raged at him a bit first, but his therapist was helping him understand that that was due to his problem with his own self-image. If Nicky felt comfortable forgiving Aaron, then Aaron had to accept that. Aaron could not continue begging for absolution that had already been granted, because that was a form of emotional manipulation. Aaron had to instead, show Nicky every chance he got, a change that made Aaron worth forgiving.

There wasn’t a lot of time for Aaron to think about how lonely he was, because he was busy stretching himself as thin as possible to make sure that his future panned out. So, while he missed the Foxes, and the Monsters most of all, time passed in a busy whirlwind.

So, color Aaron surprised when, on his third night as an official trauma surgeon, out of residency, bonafide exy god Kevin Day wound up on his operating table, unconscious, bloodied and wearing his age a little too well. Aaron glanced down at his puppy belly before going over to wash for surgery, his nurse barking information in his ear as he went. Thirty year old Aaron Minyard was surprised to realize that he hadn’t forgotten Kevin Day, and even more surprised to realize that it had been a good six years since he had last spoken to him.

* * *

 

The greatest moment of Kevin Day’s life was the moment he made Court for the second time. There was something so satisfying, knowing that all the time that you had put into something had paid off. Every moment after making Court, on Kevin Day’s list of great moments, had everything to do with exy.

Throughout history, there have been several evangelical movements, awakenings as it were, that swept across the nation, bringing sinners back into the arms of a vengeful but forgiving god. Exy was Kevin’s own movement, but rather than bringing him closer to a deity, it brought him closer to his mother. His passion for exy was what tied him to her. There was nothing more meaningful that they had shared.

Kevin was a six year old boy when he lost his mother, and every moment of his life since then had been filled with frenetic movement, striving towards a woman that he would never reach. There was no goal that Kevin could attain that would bring him closer to his mother, she already resided within his heart. Each step that Kevin made, Kayleigh took with him. Instead of running a race where the prize was his mother, Kevin made every goal something beautiful that he could share with his mother. He thought there was nothing more meaningful, than something she had created, that could bring them together.

Kevin spent all of his twenties on a team based out of Boston. He found a small place in the metropolitan area called Weymouth. Kevin chose Weymouth for its high concentration of Irish ancestry, another way to connect with Kayleigh—the daughter of Irish immigrants.

When he wasn’t traveling with his team, he could either be found working on research articles that he published at the local university, or visiting Andrew and Neil or Wymack and his little brother, Daniel. When he was traveling with his team, he was most often found working out or going on pub crawls with the other strikers.

Kevin had to fill his life to the brim with activity or he was left to dwell on memories that he had poorly suppressed years ago. There were still moments that Kevin woke in the middle of the night and had to call Andrew, Andrew would always answer. There was something special about his relationship with Andrew and Neil, not a lot of people understood his anxious paranoia babble in the dead of night, but the two other men definitely understood and could relate.

Kevin had dated a couple times over the years, but the only other people that were willing to put up with his fast pace life were younger athletes. Kevin was rarely interested in people much younger than him, because they were fine to go out with, but the second you went to your tiny flat to read countless books and journal articles, they bounced. It was that reason that Kevin kept things mostly physical. Conversations with Wymack—his dad—had convinced him that he probably needed to deal with a lot of himself before he committed to anyone and that was fine with him.

There was a restless energy about Kevin. He felt like there was a piece of his life missing, and he couldn’t help but think, in the darkest hours before dawn, that he missed the easy partnership he had had with Riko. Fuck, not that he missed Riko. Kevin was glad that the bastard was in the ground, even gladder that Tetsuji had never deigned him worthy enough to reach out to after Andrew had jumped down his throat the first time he tried. But going from the partnership at the Nest to the partnership he had with Andrew, that eventually came to include Neil, and the friendship he had with the Monsters to being all on his lonesome took a toll on him.

Luckily, Kevin had his starting striker, Jared Myers. Jared was two years older than Kevin, at thirty two Jared had a wife and four kids. His kids loved Kevin and visited his apartment so often that he got uncle status, and took the kids at least once a week on the off season so that Jared and Myla could have a date night.

During the season, Jared and Kevin went out drinking together all the time. That was what they were doing that night. Jared was going to take a taxi to get a rental and then he and Kevin were going to head a little bit out of the way to hit up a few bars that they heard great things about, but never had the excuse to go.

Kevin had been up all night reading about the Romanov sisters the night before, and when Jared picked him up he kept falling asleep as Jared was telling him about the antics his kids had gotten into while they were away. Jared wasn’t concerned and turned on the radio, knowing that once Kevin got two shots in him he would perk right back up. He turned it onto the highlights of their game from earlier in the evening and settled in to finish the two hour drive with a snoring Kevin Day.

If you asked Kevin what had happened, later on, it went something a little bit like this:

There is something strangely freeing about sleeping in the car. There isn’t the worry that something could creep up on you, especially if you were traveling at a steady seventy miles an hour. In fact, Kevin did all of his best sleeping in cars. He remembered Jared telling him something that Myla told him about what their youngest daughter Yvette had gotten into; something about using her sisters Yvonne and Yvanna for target practice or maybe it was that she had unlatched her baby brother’s baby gate and Dimitri had decided to run headlong towards the stairs before Myla could snatch him up. ‘Vette had a penchant for being the hell raiser of the bunch.

Everything after that was a soft blur, in the same way that the lights go soft when you first start falling asleep and you can’t make your eyes focus. All Kevin really remembered about the rest of the ride was the quiet murmur of the announcer on the radio, Jared decelerating to get off the interstate, and then the lurching sensation that the ground was no longer beneath the car. The sick rush right before the biggest drop on a roller coaster, not enough to make you sick, but enough to have your heart in your throat and your stomach trying to crawl behind your spine. There was maybe the sound of glass. It reminded Kevin of the glass that his girlfriend from college, Thea, had thrown at him the day she broke up with him. It shattered right next to his head, and Kevin knew that that had been deliberate because Thea had deadly accurate aim. After the glass had sprayed across his face she had screamed _‘Fuck you, Kevin’_ but instead of her high scream, he heard a low garble and a man’s voice. Like what you would hear if someone had chewed up their words before they spoke around them. He remembered asking ‘ _What?’_ and then nothing.

* * *

 

The worst thing in the world was crashing from a caffeine buzz on the 17th hour of a mandatory 18-hour shift. While his patient was being prepped for surgery, Aaron ducked into the breakroom and washed down a caffeine pill with a large coffee. Not something he could medically recommend, but if Aaron was hoping to get through this final surgery and be awake enough to meet up with Kevin afterward he had to.

He was anxiously excited about meeting up with Kevin. It had been a month since Kevin had shown up on a gurney in Aaron’s OR because of a car accident. A piece of metal had torn his thigh open to the muscle, and Kevin was luckily to be alive after a crash like that. The driver was luckier, only sustaining a sprained wrist and a concussion from where his head impacted the steering wheel. After stitching Kevin’s thigh up, Aaron waited around until Kevin woke up to berate him for getting himself hurt. Kevin had been in a cheery mood, considering not more than six hours before he had been unconscious while Aaron had stitched him back together. Kevin had insisted that as a thank you, Aaron let Kevin take him out for dinner.

Their schedules lined up so weird that their dinner had ended up being a four am breakfast at the end of one of Aaron’s 18-hour shifts before he had two days off, while Kevin was out of town. The breakfast had been enjoyable enough that Aaron had asked him out to breakfast the next week. Aaron was surprised that their conversations weren’t just reminiscing their past together. They shared a lot of their current lives, things that they didn’t have in common but found that they were both interested in learning about one another.

This would be their fourth breakfast since Kevin had been in the car accident, and he was healing up well. That was something that Aaron had noticed, something that his eyes naturally catalogued without him having to think anymore. Other than some tightness that made his movements less fluid, Kevin didn’t have any complications with his surgery. He hadn’t complained about Aaron’s suturing job either, and that was something that Aaron was entirely too proud about.

Hopped up on caffeine, Aaron went into his last surgery of the night, an emergency salpingo-oophorectomy. The patient had come in complaining of severe cramps, the attending physician assumed it was period cramps, prescribed her a painkiller and moved on. It was a female nurse that had insisted they give her an ultrasound. They found that she had a cyst that had caused her fallopian tube to become twisted. This caused the ovary to not get the nutrients it needed to stay healthy, namely blood; if it had been ignored as the doctor had insisted on doing, it could have killed the patient. Aaron was to go in and remove her ovaries and fallopian tubes. Her husband was hysterical outside of the OR, and Aaron wanted to have sympathy with him but he was too tired to focus on anything other than his patient.

He took fifteen minutes after the surgery was complete to talk to the husband. The man told Aaron that he and his wife had been trying to conceive for a very long time. He didn’t know how he was supposed to tell his wife they would never have a baby. Aaron told him that what was most important was that they were both alive and had one another. Aaron spoke to him about the statistics of women seeing their husbands through traumatizing surgeries and illnesses, and the staggering difference of husbands often leaving wives. The man was insistent that none of that mattered anymore, just her happiness, and Aaron was slightly more invigorated. He spoke frankly about his brother’s experience in the foster system and suggested some resources, encouraging them into considering fostering or adopting.

Aaron always felt better after a surgery went well and he was able to have a meaningful conversation with the family. It happened rarely because he worked in emergency medicine and typically couldn’t take the time in between surgeries. He stepped into the unisex locker room to change before he walked out. The only other people that were in there were Marsha and Dennis. Marsha was the Chief Resident and her husband Dennis was the Head RN, they were sort of the power couple of the hospital and were referred to as Mom and Pop. Everyone in the hospital adored them. Dennis was stepping into his scrubs and Marsha was walking out of the showers wrapped in a towel.

“Marsh! You’re looking good. I heard you just had your 29th birthday this past Saturday, I swear, you don’t look a day over 25. Dennis, how did you bag such a young thing, you old geezer. I’m telling you Mar—“

“That will be quite enough, Aaron. Yes you can borrow my shampoo, but it bears repeating! You need to—“

“I know, I know. Keep some shampoo here because I always shower after shifts here. Marsh, I swear you’re trying to bleed me dry. I’m in debt up to my ears, how do you expect a young, broke thing like myself to afford luxuries like a second bottle of shampoo?” Aaron joked.

“I hear you, I hear you,” Marsha sassed, throwing her shampoo across the locker room to Aaron.

Marsha Edwards was every bit the doting mother Aaron had never gotten. She had taken him under her wing when he walked in the doors as an anxious resident, and she put him on the fast track to become Chief Resident when she retired after her 55th birthday later that year. He was sure that she would just rent space in his office so she could continue bossing him around, like she’d been doing since he showed up all those years ago.

Aaron dove into the freezing spray cradling her shampoo in his arm when she shouted from the locker room. “And what did I tell you about flirting with me when you were on the clock, Aaron Michael Minyard!”

“Marsh! I’m wounded. You know I would never. I clocked out before I walked in. We both know that Kelsie is the only one stupid enough to break one of your rules.” He heard Dennis bark a laugh and could practically feel Marsha rolling her eyes from the other room.

“Get some sleep, kid,” Dennis yelled at him before the door slammed.

Aaron’s watch buzzed while he was shampooing his hair. It was probably a text from Kevin. Kevin had insisted on getting him a smartwatch for his birthday two weeks ago. Aaron thought that his timex watch that he bought for $30 was sufficient enough, but Kevin had convinced Aaron that he needed a watch that would sync with his phone. The selling line had been that it was waterproof. Aaron didn’t know how many times he jumped in the shower with one of his watches, only to drown it.

Aaron ignored responding to the text in favor of stepping into his black joggers. As he shoved his arms through the turtleneck that brought out his eyes, Aaron thought about the twin that had only answered his call because it of a call that had happened six months prior. Walking outside, Aaron thought about the time he caught one of the interns with speed. He had confiscated it and had promised not to report it if the kid started going to a methadone clinic. Entrusted with the task of disposing of the methamphetamines, Aaron found himself faced with relapse.

The NA meetings Aaron went to were religious about referring themselves as addicts, even if they had been sober for years, because faced with the temptation, there was no such thing as being a past addict, there was only the you that was an addict. Relapse was very common, even within his NA group, but Aaron had never relapsed. That was because no one else had Andrew Minyard as their sponsor.

Aaron called Andrew at an obscene hour in the morning, crying that he was going to relapse because he had already convinced himself that the drugs would be out of his system before the yearly drug test happened. Andrew had driven the 300 miles that night, and let himself into Aaron’s apartment, where he had locked himself in the bathroom. The pills were in a little baggie on his kitchen counter. Andrew snatched them up and destroyed them immediately, without letting Aaron see how he got rid of them. Andrew then took a month-long sabbatical from university to make sure that Aaron didn’t relapse. He spent Aaron’s shifts in the little office the hospital had provided him, eating an inordinate amount of Jell-O’s from the hospital’s cafeteria. Aaron was sure that that would come out of his salary, but he wasn’t mad at his brother. He though Andrew hated him and the fact that Andrew came without a moment’s hesitation meant more to Aaron than he could ever convey. After Andrew left, he called Aaron once a day and they had a terse conversation over facetime, just so he could make sure Aaron hadn’t relapsed.

Aaron missed being someone his brother worried about. It was nice to have someone to worry about him. Aaron slouched into the seat beside Kevin, who lightly pushed his shoulder and joked about ignoring texts as he shifted into reverse and backed out of the parking spot. Aaron just tiredly held up his dead cellphone. He could respond on the watch but the keys were so small that it was too difficult for him when he was fully rested, much less on the back end of a long-haul shift.

Kevin snatched the phone out of Aaron’s hand with a flourish and plugged it into his car to charge. Aaron yelped and snatched the wheel, that Kevin had let go of to plug the phone in, to keep them from swerving into the ongoing lane.

“Two hands on the wheel please! I literally just finished stitching you together from a car wreck, if we both get busted up I’ll be of no use to either of us.”

Kevin dramatically put both hands on the wheel at 10 and 2. “I’d like to state, for the record, that I was not driving when that car crash occurred. Also, it’s four in the morning, no one is on the road but us, man.”

“Oh, well if there’s no one out, I’ll just take a nap then.” Aaron slouched down in the seat and leaned against the window.

“Just when I think you can’t get any shorter—wake up!” Kevin snapped his fingers right in front of Aaron’s face.

“Since when are you such a morning person,” Aaron grumbled.

“Since Aaron the Grouch insisted that I have breakfast with him at four am once a week,” Kevin said, cheerily. “I flipped my schedule around. I’m up at five am now. No more ten o’clock mornings for me. Now it’s much easier to wake up early at 3:30 and it doesn’t throw me off for the rest of the week anymore. ‘Sides, I love my mornings with the grumpy doctor.” Aaron’s stomach lurched at that little word coming out of Kevin’s mouth in reference to him.

“I miss the Kevin that was not so cheery in the mornings,” Aaron teased.

Kevin got serious and said, “Well I missed seeing you, so there are some things that are sufferable and others that are not, get over it Mr. Bossy Doctor Pants.” Aaron’s stomach started doing flips again.

“Well, I suppose I can suffer it if you continue picking up the tab. Some of us are neck deep in debt,” Aaron joked, trying to take the conversation away from them.

“About that,” Kevin started, frowning.

“Oh no, Mr. Rich Exy Player, I’ll let you buy me breakfast but I won’t let you buy my way out of these loans,” Aaron chided. Kevin grumbled about how that one commercial he did during the Olympics the summer before gave him two times the amount of money he would need to pay off the debt. Aaron wasn’t hearing it either way. He just wanted to spend time with Kevin, not have Kevin fix all of his problems.

That was something surprisingly great about Kevin. He didn’t insist on reminiscing college. They mostly spoke about what was happening in their lives currently. Aaron loved it. Hearing about Jared and Myla and the antics their kids got into. Aaron was especially interested in the triplets’ names and their nicknames. Vanna, Vonne, and Vette.

When they pulled into the diner, Aaron felt the last of his coffee wearing off and was ready to get another two cups in him so Kevin wouldn’t insist on driving him back to his car or more embarrassing, insisting on driving him home and then leaving practice early later to drive him to go pick up his car from the hospital.

* * *

 

Kevin smiled at the man sitting across the booth from him. For the past six months, they’d had breakfast countless times, and this wasn’t the first time Aaron had fallen asleep across from him. Along with breakfasts they’d had lunches, dinners, movie nights, and so much more. Kevin was fairly certain that it was just habit at this point that he texted Aaron sporadically throughout the day and Aaron called him every time his shift ended. When Aaron had gone to a medical conference in Sweden, he would call Kevin, forgetting about the time difference, and Kevin found that he didn’t mind being woken up in the middle of the night by an excited Aaron talking about his day.

If Kevin woke Aaron up, he would insist that he had only dozed off for a moment, but Kevin knew that he had been a sleep for about forty-five minutes. Even though Aaron had been asleep for most of the hour, Kevin had to admit that he’d had worse dates. Dates. Kevin wasn’t sure what they were, he knew that there was no rush to define what they were, but he had seen the tiny hole in the wall that Aaron was living in and desperately wanted to ask Aaron to come live with him. He thought he had seen mold in the stairwell last time he had gone to visit Aaron.

Kevin was thinking of the best way to platonically ask someone to move in with you to your house that you didn’t have to make payments on when the waitress walked over and snorted lightly at a sleeping Aaron. Kevin signed the air and she nodded before pulling the check out of her back pocket. At least breakfast was something that Aaron would let Kevin buy for him.

Kevin was particularly excited about today because the season had just ended and Aaron had the next two days off. When Aaron woke up from his nap, Kevin was going to take him back to his car and Aaron was going to sleep off this last shift before he met up with Kevin against for a night of drinks before going to the movies.

Before Aaron had fallen asleep, it had looked like Aaron was finally going to ask about the Foxes. At least it had looked like that. They had talked backwards for a while, sharing their pasts, when Aaron finally got to how his relationship with Katelyn had ended. Kevin had shared the blow out that he’d had with Thea, and they both laughed about their younger self’s inability to maintain relationships.

Aaron had neatly skirted any talk of the Foxes since they had started meeting up all those months ago. Kevin figured that Aaron had his reasoning for wanting to separate himself from all of the Foxes and wasn’t going to pressure him into anything; even though Dan and Allison were trying to pressure him into bringing them up to Aaron. All of the Foxes missed him desperately, but Aaron’s graduation had coincided with the final ruling on the case of The State of South Carolina vs. Aaron Michael Minyard on the murder of Drake Anthony Spear. Kevin understood that there was probably some unresolved tension with his memory of college, and he knew that he and Andrew had only started talking again about a year ago.

Speaking of Andrew, the demon and his less tame half were currently tearing apart his house. They came to visit with their demon cats about once a month. Kevin was hoping that the brothers would meet up, while Andrew was in town, for the first time since Kevin moved into his house. He had convinced Neil it was a good idea and if Kevin knew Neil—and he did—the backliner with a motor mouth was probably convincing Andrew that it was a good idea. Kevin checked his watch. 5:25. Perhaps Neil wasn’t convincing Andrew now, if he knew what was good for him.

Kevin grabbed his jacket and reached over to shake Aaron awake. Before leading the overtired man to his car. He was just going to drive Aaron home since he was going to be meeting up with him later that night anyway. Kevin waited until Aaron shut the door behind him before Kevin sped off to go verbally spar with his two favorite demons.

* * *

 

Aaron woke with a jolt when his front door was kicked in. He scrambled awake, tied up in his bed sheets, falling out of bed as his intruder burst into his room. Aaron was clad in only his boxer briefs and he decided to curl in on himself and hide under his blanket, since the bedroom door was on the other side of the room. Maybe they would just steal his shitty TV and leave, he was fairly certain a demon was inside it anyway.

“Jesus, fuck. You live like this?” Andrew asked kicked over a precarious stack of cups that Aaron had stacked on the floor.

“Fucking eh? Andrew, did you kick my godforsaken door in?” Aaron demanded from the ground.

Andrew walked around to the side of the bed Aaron was hiding on before giving his brother a sardonic smile. “I don’t happen to have a copy of your key.”

“You need a new deadbolt.” Came Neil’s voice around a spoon.

“Are you eating my food? Some of us aren’t rich exy players you dick!” Aaron shouted, righting himself and the blankets.

Neil gave Andrew a confused look before grinning around the spoon. “Do you remember his SSN?”

“His? Yes, and I know yours too,” Andrew said, bemused.

“We’ll be back in an hour, Aaron. Make sure you get dressed Kevin said you guys were going on a date in,” he glanced at his watch, “four minutes.”

Andrew and Neil walked out the door to go commit fraud or something—maybe pay off his loans, Aaron didn’t fucking know. Aaron looked at the clock and swore. He must have slept through his alarm because Neil was right, he had four minutes before Kevin was supposed to pick Aaron up. Aaron dove into his closet before snatching up the first things he saw that matched and went to lock himself in the bathroom. He was still in the shower when Kevin called his name in a panicked voice.

“I’m in the shower! Andrew broke down my door. I’ll be ready in a few.”

Kevin started swearing behind the door before Aaron heard him on the phone. Maybe he was going to order in some takeout. Aaron’s stomach growled, he was craving Chinese.

“Hey! If you’re ordering some food I’m in the mood for China Star. The menu is in my nightstand drawer. What I normally get should be circled,” Aaron called, scrubbing the suds through his hair.

Kevin was at the door then. “I was calling to get your door repaired, but I will go call for takeout now. Take your time, we won’t get drinks until the door is fixed.”

Aaron tripped over himself while he got ready. When he opened the door a tiny, bird-like girl was standing outside his bathroom door and they both screamed. Kevin poked his head around the door. “You’re ready! This is ‘Vette. Careful, she’s the hell raiser.”

The tiny blonde put her hands on her hips and looked up at Kevin crossly before spouting off in Russian faster than Aaron could keep up with. He had very little Russian, only picking up a few phrases that would help in medical emergencies. Kevin pulled a mocking face at her before responding in French, making her voice shoot up an octave. Aaron didn’t have to know Russian, she was chewing him out for whatever he said to her.

Kevin picked her up in a football carry before leading Aaron into his front room. “I called Myla to come fix your door. She’s a bit of a handyman. She fixes up houses in her spare time. Mind you it’s interior design, but the girl is good with the odd job in a pinch.”

A brown-eyed woman who was about as tall as Kevin, turned around and smiled at Aaron. All of Aaron’s friends tapped out at 5’3 so it was odd being surrounded by so many tall people in his own home.

By the time the food had come, Myla and her small daughter were gone, but Aaron understood why Kevin was so gone on the small girl. She was an absolute delight to be around. Aaron found himself excited to meet the rest of her siblings and he shocked himself into silence. He hadn’t realized until just then that he had planned his future so closely with what he assumed that Kevin’s would be.

When they were walking out the door to go get drinks before catching the midnight premiere of some historical movie that was sure to be inaccurate, Aaron got a text from Neil telling him that he wouldn’t have to worry about medical school debt anymore. Aaron didn’t have it in himself to be annoyed. Everyone around him was insanely wealthy, he was sure that it was going to affect him this way sooner or later.

When they arrived at bar, it appeared that it was singles night. Lots of people in tight, skimpy clothing rubbing up against one another between tall tables while music pumped out of the speakers. It was too loud to talk, but Kevin pushed their way through the crowd and secured them two seats at the bar. They drank for a few hours, playing tic-tac-toe in the condensation on the bar before it was time to leave for their movies.

The movie theater was crowded as well. A superhero movie was being released the same night, so as they waited in line Kevin was pressed up against Kevin’s back. Kevin wasn’t paying attention when Aaron leaned back into his chest, but Aaron felt when his laser focus was turned on Aaron. The line was slow moving, so Aaron turned around without stepping away from Kevin. Kevin wound his arms around Aaron to keep him from tripping over their feet. He leaned down when Aaron went up on his toes, from the look on his face, Kevin didn’t know what to expect. Aaron hoped it was okay that he leaned in and kissed the corner of Kevin’s mouth.

“I’ve been meaning to do that for a while,” Aaron confessed.

Kevin’s answering smile was blinding and he leaned down to capture Aaron’s lips in a kiss. “Will you move in with me?”

Aaron laughed before saying yes. He didn’t have it in him to tease Kevin for moving so fast. Aaron didn’t think he had ever loved anyone this much before. When they got to the counter to buy their tickets, the boy at the counter whispered conspiratorially to Aaron that Kevin was so in love with him, just by the look in his eyes. Aaron didn’t remember any part of the movie, he just reveled in the memory of Kevin’s lips on his. A memory that he could recreate whenever he wanted. Aaron was in love.

**Author's Note:**

> follow the lovely @foxes-evermore on tumblr!!


End file.
